


He Knows Me So Well (Festive is the Best-ive)

by Mallory_Clayborne



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Presents, Gen, Not Shippy, She's 13, Skulduggery Pleasant Fic Exchange 2019, Skulduggery being a grinch, Val's parents and the reflection have minor roles, Valkyrie loving the festive season, did my best to attempt the vibe of the earlier books where everything isn't quite so depressing, post-Playing with Fire, relatively young Val
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:47:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21727006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mallory_Clayborne/pseuds/Mallory_Clayborne
Summary: Valkyrie loves Christmastime, and Skulduggery knows it. Food, tinsel, her da being silly, giving gifts, getting gifts, all of it, the whole shebang. Skulduggery insists he has no issue with Christmas; just the EXCESS of it all. Which is basically an issue with Christmas, as far as Valkyrie is concerned. She wishes the Detective would embrace the season, even just once.And he tries for her, God does he try for her, even if in his own peculiar way...
Relationships: Valkyrie Cain & Skulduggery Pleasant
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16
Collections: Skulduggery Pleasant Fic Exchange 2019





	He Knows Me So Well (Festive is the Best-ive)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trainwhistlesatnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trainwhistlesatnight/gifts).



> Merry Christmas one and all; but especially Train! I deliberated for a while over which of your prompts to fill but eventually couldn’t resist the absolute banter possible with Valkyrie at age 13. The idea is that it’s set in between Playing with Fire and The Faceless Ones; I am aware in canon that PwF happens in May 2008 and TFO October 2008, but I frankly don’t care all that much. So I suppose this is an AU where The Faceless Ones takes place about three months later than it really did. Yay for ignoring canon. Similarly let’s forget that the company Nix&Kix was only founded in 2014. Excuse my Irish geography in not knowing how far Haggard is supposedly from Dublin. The house described in Cabra is semi-true: there is a house there always decorated well, but I embellished it to the scale of some of the American displays I’ve seen on the internet for the sake of Valkyrie’s amazement. 
> 
> Have a brilliant holiday, and enjoy :)

There was a lot, Valkyrie mused, she didn’t know about Skulduggery Pleasant, that he knew about her. She didn’t know his given name, but he’d known her for her first twelve years as Stephanie Edgley. She didn’t know what scared him, but he knew she was claustrophobic and not a big fan of rats either. She didn’t know what was (had been?) his favourite food, but he always knew to stop to let her get pizza if they were out fighting bad guys for more than eight hours at a time. She didn’t know everything he could do with his strong powers, but he watched every development she made with her magic and taught her to capitalise on it. 

However, one thing she definitely, certainly, unquestionably, indisputably knew about him is that he was an  _ absolute bloody killjoy  _ when it came to Christmas.

Her insistence on playing ‘Whamageddon!’ as soon as the 1st of December rolled around had confused him, and he’d only been dismissive insofar as, when she’d explained the rules, saying it was completely arbitrary to avoid one particular Christmas song out of stubbornness. Not that it was going to be difficult around him anyway: the Bentley, he said, was a Christmas-song-free zone, and the radio, the rare times it was on, gave its usual offerings of easy listening and middle-of-the-road music.

She’d told him that there was a school Christmas play, and that the reflection had outdone itself in categorically refusing to act in it, instead offering to help throw paint at an old Alice in Wonderland set to repurpose it for the backdrop to a semi-accurate Bethlehem. She’d really enjoyed messing around painting clunky, half-remembered versions of China’s tattoos onto the side of what was to be the barn before thoroughly painting over them, a jokey take on how close she’d been to magic her whole life until now. Skulduggery had admonished her somewhat, saying it was careless, that the magic community couldn’t afford to slip itself into ironic mortal jokes.

Sat in the Bentley after a longer-than-expected foray into the Sanctuary, the two were forced to wait for a few minutes while the inside of the car warmed enough to fight off the mist and slight frost that had begun to form on the windshield. When Valkyrie asked why he didn’t do it with magic, he replied that he didn’t want to make a mistake in the speed he did it and cause the glass to crack with a too-sudden change of temperature. She told him she doubted he’d get it wrong, and he said the Bentley was worth more than taking that risk. She’d shrugged, and gazed out of the section of her passenger window she could actually see through at the lingering icy patches on the pavement, the weak afternoon sun doing its level best to emerge victorious.

She bit her lip for a second, hoping she wasn’t about to discover he’d actually died on Christmas day, and bit the bullet of the question in her mind.

“Why don’t you like Christmas?”

“Hmm?”

“Well, you’ve just been grumpier than normal every time I try and get a little festive.”

“I’m not the grumpy one in this partnership.” 

“Don’t call me grumpy; but even if I am usually ‘the grumpy one’,” she said with airquotes, “you’ve definitely stolen that title since December started.”

“I don’t dislike Christmas. I think it’s a very nice Pagan festival that has been completely appropriated by Christians, and later capitalism, turning it into what it is now.” Valkyrie frowned.

“So you don’t like it because it’s not like it’s used to be?”

“Similar to how you young ones never stop using computers and rely too much on mobile phones, yes,” he said drily. “While it was appropriated, in many ways it has improved Christmas. The Christians chose what I would consider the more entertaining parts of Yule to perpetuate, and Hallmark did that once again, so what we really have now is quite a refined version of the holiday. Besides,” and he paused for a second, like there was a sigh he had no need to voice without lungs, “I’m not so old that I was born when Ireland was, indeed, Pagan. The mortals were all Catholic - and being conquered by the English Protestants - by my time.” Valkyrie went to ask another question, but that was when Skulduggery decided the windscreen was clear enough, and he put the Bentley in gear, and she swallowed her question to let him drive.

About halfway back to Haggard, Skulduggery glanced over at Valkyrie, not like she saw, as she was back to gazing out of the window.

“Have I upset you?” he asked, and she redirected her interest to back inside the car.

“No. Why do you think that?”

“Because you aren’t saying anything.”

“Well, normally when people say why they don’t like Christmas, it isn’t so…”

“Factual?”

“Impersonal,” she said, watching him. There was no visible reaction. Sometimes she wished he had a face.

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know. People who say they don’t like Christmas usually  _ do _ , they’re just making a point about how they specifically hate obnoxious jumpers or have a turkey allergy or are Jewish and don’t get the whole excessive Christmas fever thing.”

“You say that like you’ve met an Israeli with a poultry intolerance and a disdain for knitwear.” She couldn’t help but laugh.

“But you get what I mean, don’t you?”

“I suppose I do. And I’m much the same. I think the spirit of Christmas is very nice, and the day itself is a deserving holiday. Everything around it just gets a little… excessive.”

“And God knows you’re the only one in a room who’s allowed to be excessive.” From the way he tilted his head, she knew he would have rolled his eyes if he could. Maybe she didn’t need him to have a face.

Valkyrie was in her bedroom, about 6pm, after a day she’d spent at school, the last full day (the 17th) before they broke up at lunchtime tomorrow for the holidays. Her mam’s closest cousin and her girlfriend were visiting tonight to drop off Christmas presents. Her mam’s side of the family weren’t spectacularly interesting, but she much preferred their company to that of Beryl and Fergus. Still, as nice as it would have been, she couldn’t deny she was much more interested by the specific tapping against her window that anyone else would have ignored, but she knew to be carefully manipulated air. Her mam was downstairs and her da still on his way home from work, so she crossed to the window and opened it, looking out into the darkness to a familiar silhouette.

“Let me get changed, I’m still in my uniform. Give me ten minutes.” She pulled the window shut again to avoid the draft while she changed and, after taking off her school jumper to be safe, she let the reflection out, and it sat on her bed in a shirt and grey trousers while she pulled on her magical Bespoke clothing. 

“If anyone asks if I’m okay, say it’s cramps, because it fifty percent is.” The reflection nodded, and gave her its somewhat eerie smile, before she went back over to the window, and climbed out of it, drifting down as slowly as she could manage.

“Now,” he said, when they were closer to the pier, you should be home by ten, but I thought you might want to come along. You may get to hit someone who calls you a little girl.”

“I love doing that. Why?” He gestured airily.

“I need a conversation with someone, and he is exactly the kind of sad little man who will dismiss you. If he needs any physical persuasion, I’d be delighted for you to go first.” She grinned.

In the Bentley, warmer than the air outside that had stung at her face, Skulduggery fiddled with the centre console, and she rubbed her bare hands together to speed up the warming effect. When he began to drive, she noticed him looking at her more than usual. After a few minutes, she couldn’t take it.

“What?”

“What?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You can’t even tell if I’m actually looking at you, Valkyrie.”

“I just know. What?” Skulduggery chuckled ever so slightly.

“Turn on the radio.” She narrowed her eyes at him, but did as he instructed. 

The radio made a clicking noise she hadn’t heard from it before, before slowly, starting quietly, a song began to play. It took her twenty seconds to recognise it as ‘Silver Bells’. She began smiling, and she could have sworn he would be smiling too, if he could be.

“You seemed passionate, and I thought perhaps I had been rather blunt with you. Still, you’re not getting anything from after 1964. This is Doris Day’s album.” 

“And I’m guessing Wham! weren’t around in 1964?”

“1980, if I’m not mistaken. Now, would you like to shut up and listen to the music I am so graciously providing you with?” She laughed.

“Sure thing, Mr Grinch.”

Skulduggery had been right on two counts: the man they’d gone to see, one Amun Sunstar, had indeed dismissed Valkyrie as a child, and she had very much enjoyed hitting him for it. He’d started crying after she hit him once; he cracked and told the Skeleton Detective everything he knew as soon as Skulduggery threatened to lose his temper. Valkyrie had left feeling very satisfied and knowledgeable about some magical secrets from around 1870. The Bentley, unfortunately, had chilled in the time it had been parked outside, and her ears were still cold for a few minutes after getting in.

“Now, my dear Valkyrie, you have a choice. It’s about to go eight, and I could take you the normal route to Haggard and have you home by nine, or we could take the scenic route and it’ll be closer to half past.” As soon as he started the ignition, Valkyrie switched the radio back on, and “Winter Wonderland” began to play.

“Well, you don’t normally give me options, so I guess I’ll the scenic route. I’m starving, though. You fetched me before dinner.” He suddenly exclaimed in surprised, and she looked at him quizzically as he pulled over within seconds.

“There’s something in the boot for you,” he explained, and he got out with no further warning.

When Skulduggery got back into the driver’s seat thirty seconds later, he dropped a brown paper bag bearing the Fallon and Byrne logo into Valkyrie’s lap. She stared at him, eyes wide. 

“I knew you’d say you were hungry, and it’s rather unfair of me to simply drop you at home and leave you to scrounge leftovers from the kitchen. So I fetched you something to eat earlier. Or, more accurately, I had someone fetch it for me.”

Still a tiny bit shocked - Fallon and Byrne wasn’t exactly your everyday supermarket - she peered into the bag. There was what looked to be a sandwich, wrapped in wax paper; a bag of Korean spicy seaweed crisps, a far cry from her usual choice of Taytos; an artisan chocolate bar, 45% cocoa with dried cranberries; and a bottle of peach and vanilla Nix&Kix, a high-end fizzy pop she’d never had the chance to try.

“Oh my God,” she said eloquently. 

“Indeed,” Skulduggery replied. “You can eat in here, I don’t mind. Just don’t completely ignore your surroundings, this is the scenic route for a reason.

For a man who couldn’t eat, Skulduggery had made good decisions on what to dictate his courier to fetch for her; the sandwich was amazing, turkey and stuffing, and Valkyrie enjoyed it immensely, trying not to get too many crumbs in the car. Doris Day’s voice made for wonderful background music, while Skulduggery occasionally mused about the information they’d learnt, Valkyrie contributing with her mouth full. She was beginning to grow perplexed, however, about Skulduggery’s description of this as the ‘scenic’ route, however: it was practically pitch black outside, so she didn’t really know what he was expecting her to look at. Maybe he sometimes forgot that his own lack of light-sensitive retinas meant he had far better night vision than she did? When she swallowed her last mouthful of sandwich and tugged open the seaweed crisps, he interrupted the question she was about to ask with what was probably the answer. He was like a goddamn sensitive sometimes.

“Two miles, give or take, and you’ll see the scenic part.”

He was, of course, right. It was mere minutes until they were in what he said was the Dublin suburb of Cabra, and he slowed as the streets grew smaller and more residential. Valkyrie was putting a piece of chocolate in her mouth when Skulduggery took quite a sharp left, and suddenly the car was filled with coloured light, mostly reddish but accents of green and warm white. She looked through the driver’s side of the windshield to see what was causing the illumination, and almost dropped her square of chocolate when she saw a house absolutely  _ covered _ in Christmas decoration, lights on every inch of wall, model reindeer in the garden with a sleigh behind them. more lights and trees and presents making the whole place look magical. Skulduggery drove to the end of the road so he could turn around, which would put the passenger side of the car closer to the house in question. He pulled up outside of it, a few metres clear of the owners’ driveway.

Valkyrie stared out of the window, very much impressed by the display. It was beautiful, and what with the glimmers of frost she could see on the grass, and the Christmas music playing in the warm car, she felt a very satisfied feeling of festiveness wash over her. She heard Skulduggery click next to her, and she looked at the flame he was holding in his palm, and it took her a second to link it with Doris Day singing of open fires. Valkyrie laughed, and the smile didn’t leave her. Skulduggery’s head tilted ever-so-slightly backwards, and she knew it was his equivalent of raising his eyebrows.

“Suitably Christmassy for you?” he said as he let the flame dissipate.

“Absolutely. You didn’t have to, though. You didn’t upset me by being all… humbuggy.”

“Is that a word?”

“It is now.” She went quiet, and gazed out of the window again thinking.

“So did you and your friends not like… do Christmas together before you met me?” Skulduggery shrugged.

“Ghastly liked cooking dinner, and things, although that was never something applicable to me, what with my unique incompatibility with food. Many of my friends continue working at Christmas, often abroad, men you’ve never met because they’re here so infrequently. But you must see, Valkyrie, that it is normal for older sorcerers to go years, decades even, without seeing or speaking to their closest friends.” Valkyrie turned back to watch him, although his skull belied very few of his thoughts.

“What about… before?”

“Before?”

“When you were alive,” she elaborated. Skulduggery stayed still, no shrug like before.

“We were at war for a lot of it. Our priority wasn’t festivity, and as sorcerers, we weren’t Catholic like the mortals, so we had no particular reason to celebrate. There was a bit of drinking in taverns, I suppose.” Questions tripped over themselves in her mind, but all of them felt too much, too much for a 13-year-old girl who still knew so little about the man next to her, over four centuries old and trying his best to apologise for upset he hadn’t even caused her. Maybe he didn’t know as much about her as she thought he did.

It was a few minutes later when Skulduggery spoke again, Valkyrie having been swapping between sipping at her drink, looking at the house (always noticing new details in the light display), and watching Skulduggery.

“I ought to take you home, then. It is rather late, and you’re fed and watered now.” 

“Yeah,” she said, a little distracted by her thoughts, but she caught herself and smiled at him. The drive back to Haggard was shorter than the journey from Sunstar’s house to Cabra, but the CD had reached its end, so they reverted to the more common smooth jazz to provide light entertainment. When they reached the pier, Valkyrie texted the reflection to go upstairs and open the window to prepare for her to get in. 

“You know,” she said, “it genuinely doesn’t bother me that you aren’t a Christmas person. As nice as you’ve been to me, I’ve got my da to have musical Christmas ties and insist on having multiple advent calendars and having a gingerbread house building competition.” Skulduggery looked at her.

“Once again, you tell me I am not a Christmas person, when I am simply not an excessive festivity person. All I have done, my dear Valkyrie, is play the music by a lady whose music I rather enjoy, bought you a sandwich, and taken you sightseeing.”

“So not festive at all.”

“Not in the slightest. Except perhaps the joke with the fire, that was tipping into excess.” She knew he would have smirked, if he could. 

“Now, go home, get some rest, and I’ll contact my protégé when I next require her assistance.” She smiled, and climbed out of the Bentley, jogging home to stop herself getting too cold.

Christmas Day had been  _ brilliant _ . 5pm, still full from the amazing (slightly late) Christmas lunch, Valkyrie was sat on the living room floor fiddling with a heavyweight metal button badge maker - she’d had a pink plastic one when she’d been younger, with which she’d made many badges featuring illustrations of some of the gorier monsters Gordon had written about, and this was intended to rekindle this passion at a more grown-up level - and occasionally dodging chocolates her da threw at her head. She felt her phone buzz in her pocket and extracted it, flipping it open to reveal a text from Skulduggery reading simply ‘ _ pier?’ _ . 

“I’m going to go upstairs and call Siobhan,” Valkyrie said to her parents, sat on the sofa cuddled together, and her mam tutted good-naturedly.

“Don’t use up all your credit in one go, Steph!” and Valkyrie laughed, heading upstairs and standing in front of the mirror to get her reflection out.

“Think of something to make up that Siob got for Christmas if mam comes up before I’m back,” she instructed it, and it nodded. She took her Bespoke coat from where it was lain over the back of her chair and slipped her arms into it, then grabbed her gift for Skulduggery from under her bed as the reflection opened the window for her. She popped her collar to protect her neck from the wind as she exited her window, floating down into the cold evening darkness.

Skulduggery, oddly, wasn’t stood on the pier; he was sat down at the end of it, facing out to sea, his legs crossed beneath him. Valkyrie walked along to him, bent slightly so the strong wind couldn’t blow her to the side and into the water, and when she reached the last few metres of wood she felt herself step into the bubble of calm, warm air Skulduggery had expanded around him.

“Happy Christmas, Detective Pleasant,” and the skeleton looked up at her, watching her as she sat down next to him. The water looked black, waves cresting and threatening to wash up onto the planks of the pier, but Skulduggery kept them at bay. 

“Happy Christmas, Detective Cain,” he replied, and he lifted the gift resting in his lap to pass it to her. In turn, she handed him his present. They didn’t do cards; Valkyrie wouldn’t have been able to put one anywhere, lest her parents see it; even if Skulduggery had used a pseudonym, she still might have had to explain, and she liked to keep the lies she told her parents to a minimum. It was only now, she realised, Skulduggery didn’t have his gloves on, as he raised his left hand to cultivate a fire to illuminate their little space, She watched his finger bones, kept in line by magic and magic alone, as he lifted the ball of flame to hang in the air in front of them, leaving his hands free to unwrap his present. 

Valkyrie’s present from Skulduggery was soft and squishy, and she tore off the paper, trying to keep her excitement at bay. When she’d freed the gift inside, she lifted the paper to the ball of fire hanging before her and it caught, disappearing into smoke that Skulduggery funnelled outside of the bubble. It was a blanket, tartan-patterned, feeling like the most expensive wool she’d ever felt, and just touching it, she could feel how warm it would be to wrap herself in.

“Ghastly started it,” Skulduggery explained, “based on a pattern Gordon said was the closest your family has to its own ‘clan’ tartan. It was for Gordon, but then he died, and it lay unfinished - perhaps 80% done - in Ghastly’s shop. I retrieved it, and took it to another magical tailor, who finished it.” Valkyrie was almost speechless.

Almost, but then again, she was Valkyrie Cain.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, and she held a section of it up to her face, feeling the texture and warmth on her skin. “Thank you so much.” Skulduggery watched her.

“You’re welcome, Valkyrie. I’m glad you like it.”

“Gonna have to hide it from my mam until I can find an excuse, though.”

“My suggestion was going to be that you discovered it in a bedroom at Grimwood,” Skulduggery replied, and it took her a second to remember Gordon’s house had a name. 

“Good idea, actually. Open yours!” and Skulduggery looked down at his gift, sliding his right index phalanges under a folded corner of the paper, pulling the present open with a little more elegance than Valkyrie had managed. He too let the paper drift upwards into the fire, and he was left holding a rectangular, navy blue box, thinner than it was wide or tall, and he gently eased the top of the box open.

Skulduggery slid the contents of the box out into his left hand. It was an elegant photo frame, polished brass, engraved with a flowing Celtic knot pattern. But it was the photograph in the frame that Skulduggery focused on: it was him and Valkyrie, him on the left, head tilted slightly, one gloved hand in front of him, manipulating the air; Valkyrie on the right, knelt, but two feet off the ground, wearing a big sparkly silver badge reading that she was a teenager, laughing at the way she was hovering.

“Remember this? Tanith took it back in February. I got her to send it to me and I printed it when my parents were out shopping. My dad never uses the photo paper anyway, so it’s all good.” Skulduggery twisted his torso to be mostly facing her, and Valkyrie smiled.

“I do indeed remember. It was a nice day, no rain, even though the meteorologists predicted it would be torrential.”

“Yeah. It was kind of weird, because Gordon always said he wanted to throw me a cool gothic party when I turned 13. But I got to hang out with a skeleton and a fighter who can walk on ceilings, so it was a fair substitute.”

“Mary Shelley lost her virginity on her mother’s grave at age 16. Which is rather gothic.” Valkyrie laughed.

“Are you suggesting that for my 16th?”

“No, and especially not since your mother is still alive.” Skulduggery answered, a slight chuckle in his voice too.

Skulduggery slotted the framed photograph back into the box, and Valkyrie bundled the blanket up and held it to her chest, zipping up her coat over it. The coat was a little tighter on her than it used to be, but she could still just about fit the blanket. Skulduggery checked his watch.

“Half past five,” he informed Valkyrie, “and you’d ought to be getting home, I presume?” Valkyrie went to agree immediately, but caught herself.

“Soon. Can I ask you a question first?”

“I’d refrain from pointing out that was already a question, but I can’t help it.” She rolled her eyes.

“What are you going to do this evening?” Skulduggery looked at her, an air of thoughtfulness around him.

“The same as usual, really. A little work. Meditation. Some reading. Perhaps I will continue in my efforts to learn Persian.”

“Persian?”

“People always manage to guess I speak French and Latin and things. I thought Persian would be more of a surprise.”

“That’s so…  _ you _ .”

“Isn’t it just?” he said with a lilt to his voice, and he stood, offering a hand to Valkyrie. She took it, not even considering the fact he didn’t have his gloves on, a little surprised when she felt bone instead of softened leather, but she stood too. They were still looking out at the sea.

“I just… don’t want you to be lonely.” Skulduggery tilted his head, staring into the darkness as Valkyrie switched her gaze to him. 

“I don’t get lonely, my dear Valkyrie. Worry about yourself. China has said to you before, you can be too nice sometimes.”

“Nobody else has ever called me ‘too nice’, you know.”

“Well,” he said, with light amusement in his tone, “China likely considers basic human decency to be too kind, since people like me are her usual standard of company.” 

“I think you can be nice. Sometimes.”

“Far too nice of you to say, Miss Cain.” She laughed, and they stood in silence for perhaps a minute.

“Well, I suppose I’ll go home, then,” Valkyrie said, still a little concerned about Skulduggery. She trusted, however, he could probably handle himself after how long he’d been around, which made her feel a little better.

“Indeed. The reflection will be waiting at the window?”

“Yep, as always. No problems here.” Skulduggery pulled each of his gloves on, switching his gift between each hand as he did so.

“Then enjoy the rest of your holiday, Valkyrie, and I hope you manage to get around to eating all the foods you mentioned you wanted to eat. And I shall be in touch, Detective Cain, when an issue arises that requires your assistance.” She smirked at him.

“And to you too, Skulduggery, have a happy Christmas. And I’ll answer your call, Detective Pleasant, unless I’m in the shower, ‘cause then you’ve got to wait.” Skulduggery chuckled at her reply.

The reflection said neither of her parents had come upstairs whilst she’d been gone, so she thanked it and put it back in the mirror, absorbing memories of what had mostly been it sat at her desk and making a mental list of realistic options for what Siobhan could have got for Christmas. Valkyrie removed her coat and put the blanket on her bed, before spending a few minutes standing around in her room to let the redness in her ears from the walk home die down. When she went downstairs, she smelled Indian snacks being cooked in the oven.

“I told you not to use all your credit!” her mam said.

“Siobhan called me! She’s got a contract. And then I called Hannah, too, but that was only for ten minutes.”

“Either of them get anything nice?” her da asked.

“Yeah, Siobhan got a jet plane. Hannah got a pet tiger.” 

“And we got you a cake pop maker and a button badge machine, which is pretty much the same thing,” her da said, nodding. “I love being a brilliant parent.” Valkyrie rolled her eyes.

“More food, mam?”

“Someone,” she said, poking her husband, “said he was hungry, and I thought you wouldn’t object. It’ll be 15 minutes, alright?”

“Absolutely.” Valkyrie settled back next to the badge maker, her parents still curled up together, drowsy on the warm sofa, and Valkyrie smiled, grateful she would never have to be alone so long as her parents were here. 

But, she figured, she’d probably see Skulduggery before long, and it would be like they’d never been apart, conversation continuing like they’d been partners in crime-fighting forever. She might not necessarily know everything about him, but she knew he’d be okay, even if she didn’t know how he’d manage it. And he didn’t know  _ everything _ about her, she supposed; she liked to think she was more perceptive than he gave her credit for, understanding subtext as he spoke to her, and these days, getting his dry sarcasm nine times out of ten.

She still fell for it sometimes. She had to, she supposed, or his ego might deflate to the point where he fell over, the bloody moron.


End file.
